Written in consultation with Claude.ai
There is a man I read about years ago — a refugee living just steps from the border of a safer country. When asked why he didn’t simply cross, he said: “Here, I know what I face. Over there, who knows?”
I think about that man often. Not in a geopolitical sense, but in a very human one. Staying in a broken situation — however painful — feels safer than stepping into the unknown. I see it every day in the families I work with. Conflict is familiar. Leaping into the unknown is terrifying.
My job, as a mediator and parenting coordinator, is to make that leap feel survivable.
Which brings me to something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: AI, and the specific ways it is — and isn’t — changing what’s possible for the families I work with.
The 2am problem is real. A co-parent gets a message that reignites everything — the contempt, the fear, the old story about who this person is and what they’re capable of. The reactive reply is already half-written in their head. And there is no mediator available at 2am.
What is available is AI. And that, used wisely, changes something.
I have started recommending that clients use AI as a preparation tool between sessions — not to make decisions, not to process trauma, but to rehearse. To get clear. To buy themselves twenty minutes of thinking before they fire off a message they can’t take back. The results have been quietly meaningful.
The most useful thing AI can do for a co-parenting client is ask them questions. Not tell them what to do — ask. “What do I actually need from this conversation?” “Help me share my fears about what my co-parent will say or do?” “What would a good outcome look like?” These are the questions a mediator asks in session. When a client can work through some of that thinking beforehand, the session itself goes further.
Roleplaying is the other piece. I encourage clients to ask AI to embody their co-parent — starting with that person on their best behavior, then slowly building toward their more typical reactions. The instructions matter: start gentle, dial back if it gets overwhelming, and notice what your body is doing. If a simulated conversation starts to produce real distress, that’s information. That’s your nervous system telling you this is bigger than a rehearsal exercise. That’s when you close the AI, put a reminder in your phone to call a therapist, and put your device away.
There is something that happens in a mediation session that AI will never replicate: the experience of being heard by another human, in the presence of the person you are in conflict with. That moment — when someone has been locked in opposition and suddenly feels acknowledged — is where agreements become possible. It is where people begin to move from their positions toward what they actually need.
AI doesn’t do that. It can simulate empathy competently enough to be useful at 2am. It cannot create the relational shift that makes co-parenting agreements hold.
This is why I think of AI as the preparation layer — not the resolution layer. It extends the reach of professional support into the hours and moments when no professional is available. It doesn’t replace what we do. It clears some of the ground so we can do it more effectively.
For practitioners, the practical implication is worth naming directly: our clients are already using AI, whether we recommend it or not. The question is whether they’re using it well. That means we have an opportunity — and maybe an obligation — to give them a framework. Privacy first. Preparation, not decision-making. Know when to close the laptop and call a professional.
I always tell clients: treat every AI session like a conversation in a public café. Useful, but not the place for your most sensitive information. That means using “my co-parent” instead of their name, referring to children by role rather than name, and leaving out anything that could identify the family — schools, case numbers, addresses.
It also means understanding what the platform does with the conversation. Some AI tools train on user data by default. It is important that you help them identify AI tools that won’t remember conversations (Claude.AI) or remind them to ask before proceeding with a conversation. Part of our role as practitioners is helping people understand the landscape — not to make them afraid of the tools, but to help them use them with their eyes open.
Divorce is not just a legal process. It is an opportunity — a genuinely difficult one — to leave behind a romantic past and build the foundation of a co-parenting and financial future. The families I work with who come out the other side with something functional are not necessarily the ones who had the smoothest cases. They are the ones who were willing to move through the conflict, not just bury it until it flared up again.
AI, used carefully and with appropriate guardrails, is a new tool in that process. It won’t do the work. But it can help people show up for the work — a little clearer, a little calmer, a little better prepared to take the leap.
And that’s enough. That’s actually quite a lot.
About the Author
Laura Lorber, J.D. is a Mediator, Educator, and Parenting Coordinator at Gradient Resolutions. She specializes in high-conflict co-parenting cases and has spent three years volunteering with the Los Angeles Courts working with the most entrenched family conflicts imaginable. She is the author of Your Co-Parenting Plan Blueprint and offers virtual mediation, parenting coordination, and co-parenting coaching throughout California.
GradientResolutions.com | [email protected] | 858.522.0667
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